


Dead Time I: The Hand That Picks You Up Is...

by Viridian5



Series: Tangled String [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Action/Adventure, Clones, Drama, Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-02-28
Updated: 1998-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:59:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder, doped up and slightly amnesiac, literally appears out of nowhere at Brian's beach house.  Krycek waits for the elements of his plan to fall into place.  <i>XF</i>/<i>Kalifornia</i>/<i>Red Shoe Diaries</i> crossover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Time I: The Hand That Picks You Up Is...

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for just about everything from "Quagmire" through "Kitsunegari." Jake Fleiss and Stella by Zalman King. Brian, Carrie, and Early Grayce courtesy of Dominic Sena. All things from _The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)_ from Edward R. Pressman and New Line Cinema. __
> 
> Dark Angel/Elizabeth Walker/Alice Pryor/Serafine Fitzwalter is mine.
> 
> Thanks to Small Woodinat Creature for proofreading and fact-checking.
> 
> This story picks up a few months after "A Tangled String of Blood and Entropy." You don't have to read "A Tangled String..." to make sense of this, but it wouldn't hurt.

_"I don't exist when you don't see me  
I don't exist when you're not here  
What the eye don't see won't break the heart  
You can make believe when we're apart  
But when you leave I disappear  
When you don't see me..._

_Oh, it's kind of different when you're there  
You can lease the peace of mind  
You bought a mask, I put it on  
You never thought to ask me  
If I wear it when you're gone...."  
_   -- "When You Don't See Me" by The Sisters of Mercy  
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Brian looked up from his laptop computer as a particularly joyous round of barking and splashing broke his concentration right in the middle of a confrontation between the killer and his protagonist. He didn't have the heart to yell at Jake and Stella, not when Jake looked so happy and carefree for once. The manuscript could wait. It did Jake good to get out of that apartment, no matter how luxurious. As host, it made Brian feel good to see his guests enjoying the amenities.

His train of thought shattered, Brian took advantage of the break to stretch and enjoy the view. His house was a small dump, but being right on the beach made up for it. He let the sun's warmth and light filter through his skin. Prior to these past two months, he hadn't seen much of the sun for a long while. He'd had a different muse.

It amazed him that he could be fine one minute and then have her absence hit him like a falling anvil the next. They knew that what they had couldn't last, wouldn't work out, but that didn't stop them from feeling the pain. Brian expected her back from England in a few days. He could almost see all the minutes stacked before him.

"Brian, come on over and play! You just finished a book, and your publisher loved it. Give yourself a break," Jake said as he tossed the Frisbee. Stella ran through the surf and leapt for it. She almost knocked him down returning it.

Brian put on a happy face for Jake. He was glad that Jake accepted his invitation to come by. Jake was a brother, of sorts. "I'm a writer, I write. I enjoy it," Brian said.

Brian suddenly felt someone at his back. He didn't know how someone could be right behind him without him feeling an approach but Brian leapt up and turned, gun in hand, anyway. He saw a man in a suit came crashing down toward him in a faint. Brian grabbed him before he hit the sand face-first and pushed him into the chair. When the man's head lolled back, the face was an almost exact copy of Brian and Jake's. "Mulder?"

******************************************************

Dark Angel looked out the window as the plane made its final descent into L.A.X. England to California had been a long, punishing flight that had stripped her nerves bare. Having been involved in two gun battles and an attempted hostage situation over the past fifteen years on planes, she knew she couldn't let her guard down too far. That vigilance stopped her from really reading a book or listening to a CD to pass the time. The book she held as camouflage was still turned to page five. It stopped her from actually getting anything done. It was dead time. If Brian had been with her she could have talked to him, and with both of them keeping half a mind to what was going on around them that almost made up one attentive person.

She missed Brian in ways she hadn't expected, but she loved him too much to bring him with her into too much danger. He had neither her training nor her advantages.

Her old partner, Joe Frank, had always kidded her about her tendency to fidget in such situations, even though he knew she could be perfectly motionless when she pleased. That made an important distinction. She hated being forced into to stay in one place. Sometimes she had flashbacks from her erased childhood that involved her abduction. The blinding lights seared her eyes, and she couldn't move. At all. Her mind raced as she desperately tried to even twitch but couldn't. Couldn't move, couldn't even scream as her body became a dead thing she couldn't control. She couldn't see him, but she could hear her brother scream her name with such pain, and the hell of it was that whatever blocked her memory let her know that he screamed her name but wouldn't let her hear those syllables for herself, wouldn't let her know her own name. She could only hope that they hadn't taken him as well.

Another flashback had her taped to a chair with a bright light in her face and shadow men in suits asking questions, but she couldn't see their faces or make out their voices. Motionless and helpless again.

Immobility meant helplessness, and Dark Angel had thrown off helplessness as an option ever since she took matters into her own hands with her fifth foster father.

But now she was on a plane and had no actual control over where she was going. She called such moments dead time. Time when you do about as much good as a corpse, when you have about a corpse's say in what goes on around you, when you're at the mercy of another's whims. When you're not allowed to move. In many ways her years in government work had been dead time. Right now she could only sit and seethe.

Sit and seethe wearing a fuzzy pink sweater, white pants and shoes, and a girly coat. Instead of curling her black hair, she left it in its natural waves, which made it look longer, and pushed it back with an Alice band. She could never helping smirking at the name of that hair accessory. She had little else to smirk about. Even her eye shadow and lipstick was pink. For now she was Elizabeth Walker, but she couldn't wait to get back to Serafine Fitzwalter, American, and her Gothic, dangerous look.

Serafine Fitzwalter wasn't her real name either. Dark Angel had enough names to fit a crowd of people and never kept any one for more than a few years. She changed names so often only partly to hide her trail. In truth, she didn't feel like she had a real name, not with her birth name taken from her by the people or beings who controlled the bright lights.

At times like this, surrounded by normal people and their mundane lives, she wondered what it would be like to settle down and have a family, to stop running and looking over her shoulder. With her connections, she could sink under the vast sea of humanity and never be found if she could only stop sticking her neck out. She tried to think about having a husband, children, pets, a house, and a job. She could do far more than just kill and suspected that she could make a great deal of money using some of her other talents for a computer company. She tried to imagine going to the same job and returning to the same house every day.

Dead time. She couldn't do it. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

That whole thing with the institution had disturbed her, which was why her thoughts were flying and tumbling into odd configurations like snow in a shaken snow globe. Too many memories from her spook days. Civilized countries don't keep dungeons; they just throw you into some psychiatric ward, restrain you, and drug you until you don't know what you're saying anymore. Even if Mister Douglas, after the steady diet of drugs they had him on, couldn't tell her anything, breaking him out of there had been worth it. When she had snuck into the security wing of the hospital and seen him motionless and drug-dazed in those heavy restraints with all the IV lines in his arms, she knew what had to be done. Especially considering his history. In her berserker fury she had left such a scene of bloody and chaotic carnage behind her that she didn't see the authorities figuring out the real story for some time to come.

She looked down at Douglas' head resting on her shoulder, as it had for most of the trip. It would take time for the drugs to wear off.

"You remind me of someone sometimes," Mr. Douglas muttered against her neck.

"Good or bad?" she whispered back in an accent identical to his, a sort of clotted-sounding version of an English accent that lacked the posh sound of the single English accent Americans expected.

"Good. I miss her dearly. She was the only good in a horrible situation." He moved a little, trying to find a cozy position. "I used to be comfortable in a suit. Now it feels foreign to me." Since she couldn't bring him onto the plane in a hospital gown, she had tried to dress him respectably. Tall and thin as he was, he made that a hard thing to do in a hurry. She got him the best suit she could find that wouldn't look too suspiciously big or small for him and bought him sunglasses to hide his dilated, dazed eyes. It was unfortunate that the total effect, to her American eyes, made him look like a killer from a Tarantino film.

"I like ties. They make good handholds. As for you, you're doing fine. I was amazed that you could walk after all the junk they pumped into you."

His mouth twitched. "You steered. I'm going to have some interesting bruises. You're very strong. As an intern, you were pretending to be from Liverpool. Are you related to me now?"

"You were more aware of your surroundings than they realized."

His hand tightened on her arm. "That made it far worse. To be almost aware but able to do nothing..." He looked up at her. "But you're familiar with such things. I can tell from the look that you get in your eyes when you think about being back there and the way you tore into security. You've worked for a government but not now. American?"

"You're far sharper than you should be, Mister Douglas."

"I am forever grateful for my rescue, but I don't know how much I can help you. I can't discern nightmare from nightmarish memory."

"That doesn't matter really. The island is a wash; more than enough time has passed for a team to `purify' the place. Depending on what they want with Moreau's work, they'll either sift through the mess Montgomery left or carpet-bomb the whole area to destroy any evidence. There's nothing more I can do, so it doesn't matter. You can tell me what you like and take advantage of the beach house I'm taking you to to put your head back together. From there, it's your decision what you do with the rest of your life. I'll help you any way I can."

He looked perilously close to tears. She didn't know him well enough to know if it was the drugs' effect or not. "Why?"

"I've been where you've been. That's enough."

"I have to repay you somehow."

"Well, I have one question I would like answered if you can. Is Moreau truly dead? It said so in the transcripts of your interrogation, but that's just the sort of thing they would lie about."

He sounded choked. "Yes, he was torn apart and devoured by his own creations."

"I'd always thought of him as a man most likely to end that way. I met him once. He would work for any government willing to support his research and ignore his methods. He felt that the ends justified the means without ever realizing that the means shape the ends. He looked at me like I was a walking specimen collection. He didn't think I was human. When he left for his island I still had to deal with his apprentices. There were others like me who weren't as," her face twisted into something that couldn't be called a smile, "stable as I was or as useful. They dissected them."

"How could he think you were not human?"

"Many years ago something stole me and brought me back changed. I'm stronger and faster than I should be. I heal faster and don't age much. My senses are more acute. I've been changed at the genetic level and have some sort of implants in my brain. Moreau thought that made me not quite human. Does that disturb you, Mr. Douglas?"

"My work for the UN involved flying to war-torn countries to help mediate peace settlements. It was always the same. Some group of people decided that their neighbors weren't human anymore and that it was right, maybe that it was even God's plan, to kill them. They wouldn't stop until someone forced them to or they lost too many people or too much trade. In a few years hostilities usually begin again." His eyes met hers with a pain she understood. "I don't mind your differences. `Human' isn't necessarily a compliment."

******************************************************

Krycek nursed his coffee and read his newspaper in the cafe, trying to hide his impatience. That breakout at the English institution three days ago sounded like her work, but she hadn't returned to Kessler's place yet. He knew because he had bugged the edge of the driveway, Kessler being too paranoid to miss bugs placed anywhere else. Pryor would have found them.

Not that he didn't respect Brian Kessler. He even liked him, a decision he came to after Kessler put a gun at Krycek's neck and tried to teach Mulder to be more professional. Every time Krycek tried to teach Mulder something, the beautiful son of a bitch beat him up. Maybe Kessler had more luck. Despite his tragedies and without training, Kessler was still almost good enough to be an operative. The man might actually survive.

Krycek hoped that he had gauged Pryor's relationship with Kessler correctly, that she would return to the beach house. He needed the woman of many names as much as he needed Mulder. Kessler was a bonus. Fleiss' presence had been a surprise, and he hoped Fleiss left before the trouble came down. The architect was strictly a noncombatant and might get in the way. Too bad.

He wondered if Mulder's drugs had worn off yet. He had been in the same room with a naked and vulnerable Mulder, but he couldn't enjoy it when Mulder was too drugged to be Mulder. Did that mean he loved Mulder for his mind? Krycek smirked at the thought.

The waitress came by to fill his coffee cup and flirted shamelessly. It amazed him how little people noticed. Covered by his leather jacket and glove, his prosthetic drew no attention, even though he was currently using it as a paperweight. No one noticed the plug in his left ear that let him keep constant track of arrivals at the house. He wasn't complaining; he had always made good use of such obliviousness.

Krycek hoped Pryor would be back soon. Too much depended on everyone being in the proper place. If he had been wrong about that English institution thing, he was screwed. The ease of entry into a secure area, the efficient murder of the guards, and the release of all the "patients" in that area suggested her. She had done spook work, had once been held in such an institution, and nursed a long-standing hatred of the mental health profession. Her trainers, many of whom had also been his, still spoke of her skill, tenacity, ruthlessness, endurance, efficiency, and utter lack of guilt.

He liked Alice Pryor too. He wondered about the cheeky civil servant who had given her the name "Alice Pryor" considering her history, or rather lack of one. "Pryor" for her unknown prior life? The name gave him such a smile that he always used it when thinking of her, although he would never say it aloud to her. She accepted only the names she gave herself and the birth name in her blotted out, hidden childhood as real.

She was never any nastier to him than she had to be and had a wicked sense of humor. Sometimes they socialized over a meal and talked shop almost like friends. He didn't understand how she could balance her ruthlessness and compassion, her caution and impudence. She remained unpredictable, and he even liked that.

None of which stopped him from doing what he had to do or ever had. She understood that and him better than anyone else did. He never actually switched sides; he simply remained ever loyal to one side, his own.

Krycek continued to wait for the last puzzle piece to fall into place.

******************************************************

Mulder awoke alone in an unfamiliar bed in a dim, unfamiliar room. He thought he smelled tomato sauce cooking. He felt warm, fuzzy, happy, and distant from his body, like it belonged to someone else. It should bother him but didn't. Everything felt nice. He heard his own voice speaking in the next room.

"--just appeared out of nowhere. Yes, I meant it exactly as I said. One moment he wasn't there and the next he was. No, I don't know how. There were no bright lights, noises, or orchestra music. Jake was there too, and he could corroborate my story. Jake, Dana wants to talk to you."

Mulder sat up and felt his head swirl. He spent a moment enjoying that sensation and the ability to move his limbs before he stood up. Someone had taken off his suit jacket, shoes, and tie. Both of his guns in their holsters sat on the table next to the bed. He opened the door and peeked out.

He saw himself handing the phone to... another himself. Both were dressed casually. One had a scar on his face and scars circling his wrists. Mulder knew he had an explanation for all this but it escaped him at the moment. He didn't worry. It would come.

"Hi, Agent Scully, I've heard so much about you." This one also had Mulder's voice. "Yes, Brian told it exactly as it was. One moment Bri was sitting alone and the next your partner was falling on top of him. It's a very flat beach; if he walked up to us we would have seen him. He couldn't have slithered up to us on his belly without us seeing him." Exasperation started to color his voice. "You don't even know me, and you're calling me a liar. You're calling Brian a liar too. Yes, you are. That's the way your partner showed up and walking me and Brian through it from a different direction isn't going to change it. No, I don't know how long it takes to travel from Missouri to California. I've never been to Missouri." He held the phone away from him like it was poisonous and thrust it in Brian's direction.

Brian sighed and accepted. "It's me again, Dana. Yes, that really was Jake and not me." He pretended to strike his head against the wall to Jake's amusement. "No, I don't know the distance from Missouri to California either." Brian turned from the phone. "Hey, Jake, say hi to Mulder."

Jake turned to look at Mulder and stared at him. "Oh, shit. Somehow it's even worse when you're awake. At least Brian has that scar." Then a big dog came flying at Mulder and knocked him down in a happy storm of fur. "Stella! Bad girl!"

Dark soulful eyes looked Mulder over as Stella's plumy tail wagged at a great speed. Mulder's head spun and his back hurt where he'd hit the wall and then the floor, but even the pain was pleasant. He started to wonder what he was on. "No, it's okay. I like dogs."

Then the explanation came to him. Brian and Jake were two of his clones. He'd met Brian before but not Jake. That realization seemed to help bring his mind back to business because he then felt grateful that Brian had thought to call Scully. They'd been in Shelbyville, Missouri checking out some abductions. He last remembered entering a house with Scully somewhere behind him. Then nothing until he woke up in bed seemingly moments later. Something still stopped him from worrying, but he did start to wonder how long he'd been gone.

Jake tried to get Stella off him, sometimes muttering, "Stella, you slut," but failed. Mulder wondered if the dog liked him for being similar to Jake or for other doggy reasons. He just wished she'd stop mauling him in her affection.

Brian's voice floated back to him. "--can't just put him on a bus, not with the way he is now. I've seen beached fish with better coordination. I suspect drugs too. Don't worry, I'll take care of him. Yes, I'll ask him all the questions. He just came to. Look, I have a sauce cooking for dinner; it's about 6 o'clock here, so I have to go. Bye."

"Is she always like that?" Jake asked Mulder.

Mulder didn't like his tone and felt a little defensive. "She's very thorough."

"She's your counterpart. You both tend to take things by the neck and shake them until they say what you want to hear. And, Jake, Dana is not like that socially," Brian said. "Mulder, what day is it?"

Mulder felt a chill despite the drugs, but all he could do was answer and learn the damage. "Wednesday." When Brian and Jake shared a significant look, Mulder asked, "Okay, then, what day is it?"

"Saturday. You disappeared Wednesday." Brian looked at him, probably gauging the expression of shock on Mulder's face. "You don't remember any of that time, do you?"

Mulder felt the fear start to catch up with him through the haze. "No."

"Do you want to go to the hospital for an examination?"

"Were there any signs of assault?"

Brian grinned. "I didn't strip you all the way down, Mulder, but no, none that I can see."

"Then, no. I can't go to perfect strangers and tell them I might have been assaulted but can't be sure. Maybe later to someone who knows about my investigations..."

Brain snorted. "Yeah, asking strangers to look for signs of anal probing can be awkward, especially if after that they don't find any."

A sudden spate of honking from outside startled them all. Brain started to smile. "She's back."

"How do you know it's her?" Mulder asked.

"If anyone else would honk out the melody to Portishead's `Glory Box' as a signal, I can only surrender myself into their hands. They know too much about me for me to escape them. Besides, she called me from the airport a half hour ago."

"'She,' who?" Jake asked then looked at Brian. "Oh, her."

Mulder wondered if his two clones were really communicating on a non-verbal, almost telepathic level, or if he was just too drugged up to notice obvious cues. The first thought started him down another road of spook-o-rama as he thought about the psychic bonds twins sometimes claimed to have and wondered if his clones shared something similar and, if so, why he didn't share in it. Stella warded off his coming paranoia by licking his face until he was too occupied with stopping her to think about it.

When Brian opened the door, Dark Angel and her guest walked in. Brian's face fell, and he said, "Sera, you told me you were wearing a pink, fuzzy sweater!"

She was dressed Gothic style in black jeans, knee-high black boots, a silver cross necklace, a form-fitting vinyl top, and her faded black, battered, duct-tape-over-the-holes-and-scars leather jacket. And who knows how many weapons hidden under her clothes. Her black-lined eyes narrowed. "Yeah, and I got out of it as soon as I could. I felt like Ed Wood. Did it mean that much to you?"

"Most people have kinky fantasies about leather and vinyl. Since I constantly see you in those, I have fantasies about you in frilly pink girly clothing."

"That was way more than I wanted to know," Jake said.

"Brian, you didn't mention your guest," she said sweetly as she tossed black curls back from her face.

"Uhhm, guests. Mulder's here too. I didn't tell you over the phone because I knew you would get upset and it wasn't my fault that they're both here now when you're also here. I didn't expect you back for a while."

Her eyes briefly darkened with pain then turned outward again as she realized that her guest was quietly freaking out behind her. She turned to comfort him and said, "Right. I'm sorry, Douglas. I didn't expect this either. Everyone, this is Edward Douglas. Douglas, this is Brian, Jake, and Mulder. No, it's not the drugs affecting your vision; the three of them are twins. Brian has the scar, Mulder is on the floor and has the suit pants, and Jake has the dog, Stella. Don't feel bad if you can't keep them straight at first. If I look nervous, it's because every single person in this room except Stella has been the target of people out to kill them. I'm waiting for God's thunderbolt or at least a gang of gunmen to strike us for our impudence."

While everybody else stood around not knowing what to do next, Serafine led Douglas over to one of the living room couches and settled him in. "I am sorry about this," she said to him as she took off his sunglasses and loosened his tie.

"I've stopped expecting life to make sense," he said wearily, closing eyes that were all pupil with thins rims of brilliant cerulean, before he perked up a little. "Is that food I smell?"

"Sauce à la Brian, I suspect. He's a killer cook."

Brian came over and took on the role of Proper Host. "It should be ready in twenty minutes, Mister Douglas."

"Thank you... Brian. Will I ever stop being so tired?" Douglas asked with a muzzy despair.

"I don't know exactly what they've been shooting you up with, but you've been clean for three days and you're still groggy. I'm hoping that settling you in and giving you some food might help," Serafine said.

"I don't remember the last three days."

"Be thankful. Withdrawal hit you like a brick. Do you need anything?"

"No. I could just use a rest."

As Serafine walked away, Brian whispered, "Three days?"

She whispered back, "They had him down for months, sticking every kind of junk they could find into his veins. I just helped him through three days of screaming, vomiting and seizures. Fortunately for him, he spent most of that time blacked out. It was also fortunate that the drugs are still mellowing him down a bit because he was doing the white-knuckle bit during the flight as is. He was the sole survivor of a plane crash not that long ago."

"Have you slept at all?"

"What do you think, Bri?" she replied as she bent over Mulder, who was still sprawled on the floor. Mulder now understood why her eyes resembled burnt holes in her face, but he noticed that every time she looked at Brian she attained a kind of glow in those eyes, a glow that Brian reciprocated. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had looked at like that. "So, Mulder, why do you smell like cotton candy?" she asked.

"That's what the smell is?" Brian asked.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Mulder asked.

"It's coming from your breath and exuding from your pores. I assume it's the drugs."

When she put her hand to his forehead, Mulder couldn't help leaning into it like a cat. It felt so good, and he felt his IQ drop by at least fifty points as his thoughts scattered. Her right eyebrow lifted almost into her hairline, and she quickly pulled her hand away. He could feel his disappointment registering on his face against his will as well as a blush. Again he wondered what he had been dosed with.

"Okay, Mulder. Now I have a question for you: how do you feel about your father since you started finding out that he was involved with the people you hate the most?"

To his horror, Mulder promptly answered, "I love him, but I hate him almost as much, but I started to hate him after Samantha disappeared, and it just keeps getting worse." He hadn't meant to say anything, and he certainly wouldn't have said that if he had.

"Nice truth serum. I didn't even ask for most of that. Sorry, Mulder, it was just a test." She looked to Brian. "Is this what he was wearing when he got here?"

"His suit jacket is in the guest room."

"Great." Serafine pulled Mulder off the floor and only held his hand as long as it took. "Hey, Brian, could you put on some happy music to keep the mood up?"

"I guess I'll be putting my own music on then," Brian said and laughed as Serafine flipped him off before she left the room. Brian put a CD on just loud enough to be heard but not enough to disturb Douglas on the couch. Mulder identified it as an Aerosmith album.

"Was that--That was Dark Angel, wasn't it?" Jake asked. "I mean that sounds a lot like her voice."

"Yep," Brian said.

"You didn't tell me that your homecoming love Serafine was Dark Angel. I mean, she looks and even sounds different now. Mulder, you've been neck-deep in weird shit for years. Does this ever get any easier to deal with?" Jake asked.

Mulder shook his head to try to clear it. "No, not really."

"Bri, maybe I should leave. You have more than enough people to fill the house."

"Jake, I promised you dinner. It's all right. If you can stand the craziness, you're more than welcome to stay," Brian said as he stirred the sauce.

"Okay, but at least let me set the table."

Brian grinned. "I can live with that. You're going to have to drag some chairs from other rooms of the house though."

Mulder wandered into the living room area with a very happy Stella stuck to his shadow. Despite the mysteries and weirdness, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Brian's house was small but cozy and looked like an artist's residence with its funky furniture, cheerful clutter, and beautiful, framed photographic prints on the walls. Mulder remembered that one of Brian's ex-girlfriends had been a photographer. Abundant lamps cast warm light everywhere. The clinking of silverware against plates, the smell of a home-cooked meal, and the way Brian and Jake half-shouted their conversation to one another from dining area to kitchen stirred up old memories. Mulder, who spent so much time alone and often tried to convince himself that he liked it that way, welcomed the obvious presence of other, friendly people. This was almost like being with family, and not the dysfunctional one he had known.

Mulder took a seat near Serafine's guest, unable to resist his curiosity. He hadn't seen or heard much from his position on the floor. The man had a face that could only come from the British Isles. Had it always looked so thin, so pared down right to the bone, or was that a result of being in whatever situation Serafine had pulled him from? He looked so utterly beaten down, amazingly even worse than Serafine did. Someone else who had been abducted and drugged into submission, Mulder assumed, and for what? It made him wonder if the English government had a similar policy regarding the extraterrestrial and paranormal as his own did.

Deep Throat had once mentioned an international consensus regarding aliens, but who knew if that had been the truth, especially considering the diet of lies and misinformation Deep Throat had fed him prior to that. Mulder had never given it much thought. Maybe he should start.

Mulder wanted to know what Doulgas was in for, but Serafine had seemed very protective of him and might not say. Mulder could often talk people into giving him what he wanted, but he realized that he wasn't functioning at his best right now.

Douglas' blue eyes opened to look at Mulder with pain and a little suspicion. "Please, don't do that. You have no idea how much it bothers me to have people standing over me watching as I sleep. It makes me very nervous."

Mulder stored that reaction away for further scrutiny. "Actually, I do, and I'm sorry." When Serafine walked back into the room, Mulder asked, "So?"

Looking a bit pissed off, she handed him his guns. "First, put these back on. God doesn't look after children and madmen as well as that saying says He should." As he meekly followed her command, she said, "Your jacket has that intense cotton candy smell to it as well, but I also detected a sterile, doctor's office scent. Also, there's no way you were wearing it for the whole period of your absence unless your abductors were kind enough to keep dry-cleaning your things for you."

"You got all that from your sense of smell?" After that came the thought: they must have stripped me. He knew that one would bother him later.

Brian came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. "She's multi-talented."

She smiled, then said, "Is my music really so depressing? You could have put on the Squirrel Nut Zippers."

"We want our guests mellow and happy, not insane."

She pouted. "Most of it is your music too. Is that Jake setting the table? Must be a pod person."

"Sera, he's not as self-centered as you think. He just needs to be reminded sometimes that other people still exist."

"And that's not self-centered?"

"I give up. So what's your theory on what happened to Mulder?"

"Definitely interrogation."

"So what was that business with the way he reacted to your touch? Venus needs men?"

Serafine laughed. "I hadn't considered the alien sex fiend connection."

"They've been reduced to kidnapping groupies now?"

"I've corrupted you. Only a few months ago you wouldn't have been familiar with that band. Too obscure even for you."

"And look at how my life has improved." Then Brian looked at Mulder. "I'm sorry. We're being a little too flippant about this."

"No, it's okay. I should consider it as payback for all the times I'm the flippant, insensitive one."

"You're still not quite back. I hope those drugs cycle through your system soon because it's no fun having a battle of the wits with a disarmed man."

"At least you didn't say `unarmed.'" Mulder felt Douglas watching everyone with a keen sense of interest and wondered what he made of all this.

Then Brian pronounced dinner as being ready, and they all took a seat at the table. Jake had scrounged for chairs wherever he could so they all sat at comically different heights. Douglas, the tallest of the group, gracefully accepted the shortest chair. Brian had prepared an excellent Italian-style feast of bread, pasta, meatballs, and sausage. Since Mulder's own culinary expertise only extended to picking up the phone to call for delivery, he couldn't help feeling impressed and thinking that maybe he should visit more often. Mulder, feeling mentally impaired by the garbage in his veins, mostly sat back, ate, and let the others' conversations wash over him.

Brian's last manuscript, the one partially inspired by his time with Dark Angel, had gone over so well with his publisher that it was going to be marketed as both commercial and literary. The ban on providing author photos for Brian seemed to be over now that Mulder knew of his clones' existence, and Brian sounded very unhappy about it. He now had interviewers commenting in print on his "quirky good looks," and they seemed to be divided between thinking that his facial scar gave him an air of tragedy or a rakish, faintly sinister look. Brian thought it was all the stupidest thing he'd ever heard. Serafine had a good laugh and teased him mercilessly.

Listening to the two of them talk to one another was like watching two pros play high-stakes racquetball. Occasionally, with great sarcasm, they referred to one another as "Bunny" and "Peanut." Jake made a comment about writing to those people and thanking them for their praise on his looks. Serafine threatened to throw a meatball at him.

Mulder realized that Jake and Brian didn't sound exactly like him or like each other. They all used the same voice template but did different things with it, Jake especially.

Serafine started to tell them a bowdlerized version of her time in London, which drew Douglas into the conversation. Occasionally she would describe a place and look to him for a name or related memories. She seemed happiest describing its Gothic clubs, especially since the number of such clubs in her recent trip to New York City had disappointed her. Jake interrupted her to scold her for slipping Stella some meatballs under the table. She responded that she couldn't resist that puppy dog look of wanting; she always caved in when Brain gave her the same thing. Brian made threatening motions with his fork, while Jake once again said that that was far more than he wanted to know.

Mulder watched Douglas with some fascination throughout the meal. Douglas seemed so happy to be there among the food and company. He even seemed to be enjoying the process of eating, doing it as leisurely as possible. Mulder remembered Serafine's comment about months of being on IV lines and decided that he really didn't have it so bad.

Then Serafine straightened up and said, "Someone's outside." Crackling with that dark fire that seemed to infuse her in such situations, she stood up and went for the door, checking her guns.

"What if it's just one of the neighbors?" Jake asked.

"That's why she's just not opening a window and starting to fire," Brian said as he checked his own gun.

Serafine quickly walked out onto the porch and looked at the driveway. The moonlight provided enough light to let her make out the figure of a lone man coming toward her. He walked like a professional on the job, full of intense purpose and grace, except for a slight imbalance on one side. "Alexei, what are you doing here?"

**********To Be Continued In "Dead Time II"*************


End file.
